MY ETSY SHOP JOURNEY / why I closed the shop

bear with me it's another day of hitting of record and another day of realizing that i didn't have my mic on so profesh right hello everyone kim the ecotree here hello how are you doing so since i've started making these videos i've had a few people ask me about my own shop which has been closed for over a year but we'll come back to that and i thought it would be an idea to put together a video and just tell you guys a little bit about my backstory how i got started with etsy why it's been closed and when it's going to reopen and my plans going forward so if that sounds like your cup of tea grab one if you like tea and um we shall have a nutter well we won't i'll just talk to you but you can listen okay so start at the beginning etsy started in 2005 and it came on my radar two years later in 2007 and i thought i like the sound of this i've been sewing i like making things but there's only so many things that you can make so i thought see if other people like my stuff so i i created a shop and i made some stuff and i stuck it on and nobody bought anything even then when it was easy to be found and seen in all the rest of it on etsy it still took me six months to make my first sale so if you just recently created a new shop and you're still waiting for that first sale take heart it does take a little bit of time to get the ball rolling but once it is rolling it's a lot easier trust me so yes 2007 i've started at my etsy shop and it's a hobby i chuck things on there as and when i have them sometimes i don't have anything it it was just a hobby and something that i had fast forward six years to 2000 and i've got some dates written down um 2013. my daughter is a year old and i decide you know what i'm going to do this seriously etsy so with my shop i decided to really go all in i signed up as self-employed with our tax authority here in the uk which is hmrc so that i could submit my taxes each year and started making things properly and listing consistently and actually trying to sell my items and it still took a little bit of time to get the rhythm going and to make my first sale which i think came a month or two months after really going all in although i say going all in as my daughter was a baby i was literally working one hour each day while she napped so that was what my all in looked like and four years after starting the business properly we moved from where we were living in england back here to wales which is where i'm from originally i knew that i could make enough to pay our rent with the shop alone i had built up to that point and i wanted to see how far i could take it if i dedicated all of my time to it and i never looked back 2017 was like the best etsy has ever been for me this was before the big tsunami of changes policy changes hadn't quite hit etsy at that point but back then i was making um festival gear so if you think of like sequin [Music] robes and very bright in your face thing clothing for things like music festivals and parties and stuff like that and it was going amazingly people loved it but i was loving it a little less i couldn't shake the thought that once somebody had worn an item of mine they weren't going to keep it and they probably wouldn't even donate it to a charity shop i had this sneaky suspicion that my items were single use and then they were getting bin i hated that i'd created this hamster wheel for myself and i couldn't get off i couldn't stop making these items because they were literally paying my bills they were literally paying my rent and if i stopped i wouldn't have an income but at the same time i didn't want to be contributing to fast fashion as i saw it and just this mound of clothes getting thrown out every single day and that's when the tsunami of policy changes happened on etsy which it didn't go down well and my revenue went there was a time where it was like oh okay what do we do but on the flip side that took the hamster wheel that i had created and threw it to one side and all of a sudden i had more time to move in a different direction and that's what i did so over the next two years i used up all of the supplies that i already had sold on stock that i had gradually and i started moving into a more sustainable niche in 2019 i sold my last festival robe and rebranded the shop so it was the eco tree shop as we now know it starting more or less from scratch again and i was just building up momentum and then 2020 happened and i don't need to say anything more on that so that's the history of the shop in a nutshell why did i close the shop simply put pandemic hit all of a sudden i'm at home all the time with my daughter because her school has closed and they're also doing school work from home now which if you know you know also we live way out in the country so go having to go to the post office would have been a 22 mile round trip and i was also a little bit concerned about virus spread and how safe it was to even be sending stuff out and receiving supplies in so i made the decision to just close the shop because i thought it would be for a month or two max oh boy no which brings us to today so the shop when is it reopening either on june the 1st or june the 20th i haven't made up my mind as to the exact date the reason why i was thinking june the 20th one it gives me a little bit more time to get everything ready and also because june the 20th is the summer solstice and the idea of reopening my shop on such a positive day you know when the longest day of the year when we have well i'm thinking of a nice sunshiny day but here in the uk it's probably going to be pouring with rain let's be honest before the pandemic mess hit i was struggling to make etsy my main incomes so i was having to constantly try and find the things that people wanted and make enough of them and sell enough of them every single month to pay the bills you can imagine what that does for creativity it just picks it up screws it into a ball and holds it at the wall and then jumps on it a little bit and then sets fire to the whole thing it's not good so i'm going back to my roots back when i first started the shop i made bags primarily and i have been dipping in and out with them over the course of years so i start nerding out a little bit i've got in my mind what i want to do i always love creating things influenced by nature and the wildlife that i see around me so it's going to be with that in mind so i'm going to be buying in natural fabric dyeing them with my plants embroidering them with my designs and then making them into bags and selling them and i am really excited about that idea i might sneak a few things in and i might still keep a range of the stuff that i had last year like the reusable coffee filters some grocery bags and vegetable bags things like that you'll see what i mean oh lambs can i spin you around that's my view outside my office i can't help it they're so cute and fluffy oh these lambs are not conducive to making a youtube video but when the etsy shop is up and running i'm going to let everybody on the email list know and they will get to see the collection before it goes live on etsy so if you'd like to join the mailing list and be the first to see the collection when it's launched as well as get a discount for it yes there will be a discount um i'll leave the link below and you can sign up for it i will not bombard you with rubbish because no one's got time for that and that's it for today loves thank you very much for watching again and i will see you next week tada

Channel: Kim Bliss

Views: 19,244

Keywords: my etsy shop journey, my etsy shop, my etsy shop uk, running an etsy shop, starting an etsy shop, taking a break from etsy, etsy store, running a handmade business, my etsy shop story, why I closed my shop, closed my etsy shop, etsy chat, shop talk, etsy uk, etsy shop owner vlog, how I started my etsy shop business

Id: TdjkcaF7Ec0

Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021